Kings of the Yukon

Chip Warren

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Kings of The Yukon is a film and social impact project focused on the Yup’ik Eskimos who live on the Yukon River delta in Western, Alaska. For centuries, the Yup’ik have lived a subsistence lifestyle that mandates you take what you need to survive from the environment, but only what you need. When the King salmon fishery collapsed on the Yukon, the delicacy of this balance was disrupted, setting off an economic crisis that is threatening the fabric of their communities and the Yup’ik culture at large.

The Yup’ik have a very limited cash economy that comes solely in the form of their modest commercial fishery, the only purely Native owned and operated fishery left in Alaska. The economic cornerstone of this fishery was the Yukon kingsalmon. Prized for its nutrient density, it’s also the primary staple of the Yup’ik diet. For reasons yet unknown, however widely studied, the King salmon has been in decline for the last fifteen years, to such a degree that the state regulators put the fishery into a conservation mode which meant, as elder Bernadette Redfox puts it, “no more Kings for the people.”

Based on deep relationships with Yup’ik families and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Kings of The Yukon will be an intimate portrait of the past, present and future of these amazing people.